West African Resources Limited

Good morning and welcome to the West African Resources Investor Webinar and Conference Call. All attendees are in a listen-only mode. If you would like to ask a question directly to the company, please use the raise hand function within Zoom. I'll now hand over to West African Executive Chairman and CEO, Richard Hyde. Thank you, Richard.

Thanks, Nathan. Good morning and thanks for joining us for West African Resources March 2026 Call to Call. It was a productive quarter for our gold operations at Sanbrado and Kiaka in Burkina Faso, but before I get into discussing our performance, I want to address the ownership structure changes at Kiaka in regard to the Burkina Faso government. This has been under discussion for a while now, and as we've announced this week, the Burkina government plans to acquire an additional 25% equity interest in our subsidiary, Kiaka SA, who is the operator of the Kiaka gold mine. This will take the government's interest at Kiaka to 40%, as it has an existing 15% free carriage stake already. This additional capital share in Kiaka SA has been valued by the government at 70 billion CFA francs, which roughly equates to 175 million Australian dollars. There has been no discussion with the government regarding the ownership of Sambrado or Tuiga, and Tuiga's obviously on track to start producing later this year, and they were not referred to in the decree that was published in regards to Kiaka. We are working with the government to finalise the terms of the acquisition for Kiaka, and we hope to have that completed by the end of this calendar year. At this stage, we plan to distribute any cash proceeds from the sailors the equity sale of Kiaka SA to our shareholders by way of special dividend and we'll keep you updated with any developments regarding this. Regarding our results for Q1, we achieved gold production of 107,728 ounces across both Zambrano and Kiaka for the quarter at an oil and saponin cost of US$1,921 per ounce. We remain on track to achieve our annual production guidance of 430,000 to 490,000 ounces of gold, with all outstanding costs below US$1,900 an ounce. Gold sales were steady compared to the previous quarter, with 104,000 to 145,000 ounces sold in the quarter, and we achieved this at a price of US$4,945 per ounce. This is a strong result. given our unheaged exposure to the high gold prices. And we generated $440 million Australian dollars from our operating activities in Q1. This took our cash balance to a record $847 million, with $213 million in unsold gold bullion at the end of the quarter, based on current prices. Looking at each operation in more detail, Samburado continued a steady performance in Q1, with $42,000 and 24 ounces of gold production, which is in line with the planned 2026 annual production profile. Sambrado will see high contribution of mine ounces from the M1 South underground over the remaining three quarters of 2026 as more soaping areas become available. We achieved Sambrado's production at a site-sustaining cost of US$2,034 per ounce and sold 42,428 ounces. at an average realised price of US$4,978 per ounce. Unsold gold bullion at Zambrada at the end of the quarter totalled 11,794 ounces, laid at about US$54 million. Akiaka production continues to ramp up in the quarter, delivering 97,906 ounces from open pit mining operations, and we produced 65,704 ounces from processing operations. And this represents an 18% increase and 6% increase respectively over the previous quarter in mined and processed ounces. Kiaka delivered gold production at a site-sustaining cost of $1,779 per ounce. We sold 61,717 ounces from Kiaka at an average realized price of $4,922 an ounce. with unsold bullion just over 20,000 ounces held at the end of the quarter, which is valued at about US$92 million at the current gold price. While this production performance was impressive, we also delivered on several other fronts during the quarter. We released our updated Resources, Reserves and Ten-Year Production Plan in the quarter, which demonstrated further increases to Kiarka and Sanbrados' production plan on the back of outstanding results from our 2025 drilling programs. We're now looking at delivering average gold production of 533,000 ounces of gold per year over a 10-year period, with gold production expected to peak in 2030 just short of 600,000 ounces. Zambrano's mine plan has been extended out to 2036, with its production expected to peak in 2030 at 317,000 ounces. At Kiaka, we've also modelled higher production throughputs based on exceptional performance from a processed plant since we started operations. Our unhedged mineral resources now stand at 13.6 million ounces of gold, while all reserves total 7 million ounces. We see potential to improve annual production further through ongoing drilling programs, and we plan to drill more than 100,000 metres annually targeting extensions at M5 South Underground and beneath the M5 North open pit. and also targeting underground potential at Toiga. The 10-year plan highlighted just what a strong and sustainable future our company has and our potential to continue generating value for stakeholders and host communities over the next decade and beyond. Speaking of the future, Toiga, our development project, continues to progress well, with open-pit priest stripping commencing later in the quarter. and a total of 621,000 bcm of material was stripped. Surface grade control drilling was completed during the quarter in preparation for first ore mining which is on track for this quarter Q2 and delivery of that ore up to the Sanbrado Process Plant is expected to start in early Q3. In terms of exploration we released impressive results from our M5 South underground drilling program, where high-grade gold mineralisation was extended by 400 metres below the current mineral resource. Our resource conversion drilling program is also progressing on schedule. We also reported good results from our drilling program to M5 North, which returned wide intersections and delivered consistent mineralisation below the current open pit or reserve, and M1 North, where results support potential for a cutback. In addition, a 13,500-metre program targeting the Toowiga underground resource is ongoing. We plan to incorporate results from Sanbrado into an updated resource reserve and 10-year production plan into the coming quarter. With that overview of operational activities, I'll now hand over to Padraig to discuss the financial results. Thanks, Padraig.

Thank you, Richard. So the WAF, as Richard mentioned, the strong gold sales, the WAF group generated Australian $742 million of gold sales revenue combined in the quarter from an average gold price of US$4,945 per ounce. And we generate Australian $440 million of operating cash flow in Q1 and ended the year with a record high cash balance of Australian $847 million. Looking at the notional net cash, which is calculated as cash plus bullion minus debt, we more than doubled the notional net cash in the quarter and ended the quarter with U.S. $450 million notional net cash position. Our capital investing activities in Q4 used $90 million cash, which was comprised of $38 million investment into Sembrado, $23 million into Tuiga, and $29 million at Quiaca. Financing activities in the quarter used $45 million cash in Q4, mainly comprised of $28 million of loan payments and $11 million of interest payments. I now will hand back to Richard for his comments.